Hospital building improvements

Sheffield Children’s Hospital is a Major Trauma Centre, with the Emergency Department helping up to 200 children a day from South Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire deal with every possible problem imaginable. Our treatment is among the best in the UK, but our facilities do little to ease the anxiety felt by children and families at what is often a stressful and scary time.

The department was built to see a maximum of 32,000 patients a year but now sees 60,000 patients. You will be providing a legacy for years to come for children who may not even be born yet; future doctors, nurses, teachers or even postmen! We don’t know who will need the Emergency Department but we know it is needed to save lives and treat our children.

Charity funding helps to ensure that what we build meets the exact needs of children and their families, facilitating the best possible services to be developed. We want children visiting our Emergency Department to have the best possible experience, delivered to them by Emergency Department team who have everything that they could possibly need to give children and their families the best care.

Ward 6, our Haematology and Oncology ward treats children from babies through to 19 year olds in South Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Derbyshire and even as far south as Northampton. The department is one of twenty principle treatment centres in the UK for patients with cancer and blood disorders.

While the care received is world-class, the facilities need improvement. Children who suffer from cancer can develop post-traumatic stress disorder, but improvements to the environment in which they receive care can help relieve the tension and anxiety of our young patients. We want to deliver a new home-from-home where space, privacy and natural light transform rooms into a place of sanctuary and calm.

The redevelopment will increase the size of the whole ward, with larger bed bays and more rooms to provide care to patients in medical isolation. It will also expand the space for children to play and more than double the size of the ward classroom.

The transformed ward would create individual patient rooms with en-suite facilities, giving our patients a place to make their own and space for a parent to sleep comfortably alongside them. The new design will also allow patients to take in the beautiful and comforting views over Weston Park.

We need to get patients who urgently need critical care to our Emergency Department as soon as possible. Sheffield Children’s Hospital is the designated Major Trauma Centre for children in South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw covering a population of over 375,000 children and young people.

Children and young people arrive at the Emergency Department either by self presentation, road ambulance or air ambulance. In 2018 15% of arrivals were by air ambulance – that is around 1-2 children per month. The current arrangement for HEMS (Helicopter Emergency Medical Services) in transporting patients to the Emergency Department is to land in Weston Park opposite the hospital. This landing site presents certain challenges to the safe transport of the child to the Emergency Department and is far from ideal. Some HEMS operators even refuse to land in the park as a result. A helipad would mean patients can land anytime with flood lighting.

When cold weather sets in, the new helipad would have electric trace heating incorporated into the deck to ensure that ice and snow do not disrupt the continued use of the facility during winter. Currently air ambulances can only land in daytime hours due to inadequate lighting in the park. A helipad on the rooftop would allow patients to be brought outside of daylight hours, which will allow more children to receive the expert care available at Sheffield Children’s Hospital in winter months where daylight operation hours for air ambulances are very restricted.